The Prince

Karol Radziszewski loves to rewrite Polish art history and to question canonical truth. “The Prince” is an attempt to take a different look at the almost mythical figure of the avant-garde theatre man Jerzy Grotowski – through the prism of the actors in the laboratory group, in particular the actor Ryszard Cieślak. His role in the play “Der standhafte Prinz” was a breakthrough for Grotowski and radically changed his theatrical language with regard to the staging of the body. Radziszewski reconstructs the biography of Cieślak using performance fragments, rehearsals, letters and interviews. The Prinz project is based on archive material and is simultaneously improvised and played in order to blur the boundaries between historical facts and potential fantasies. Radziszewski also recalls “The Polish Thanatos” – the last performance of the group “Labortheater” under the direction of Ryszard Cieślak with the actress Teresa Nawrot, who was Grotowski’s longtime assistant and lover of Cieślak.